Not that director Steve Vernon and his cast, which features an outstanding turn by Kenneth Rosander as a precocious college student who marries too young and pays the price for it, don't give it their best shot. Presented by Big Dawg Productions, the show is running through May 12 at Castle Street's Cape Fear Playhouse.

Still, there's a lot to like in "A Contemporary American's Guide." It uses the device of a narrator from those hokey old social guidance films (Randy Davis, authoritative as the play's voice of society) that took on such awkward topics as masturbation and menstruation to deliver sexist, hilariously dated pronouncements about marriage. The in-on-the-joke audience watches as two very different but equally inept couples stumble through the early years of matrimony.

But while it's pitched as a comedy, much of the play is spent watching the rather depressing situations these characters get themselves into, situations made worse by a hung-up, judgmental society that didn't have patience for marital failings. Which, of course, is Bastron's point, but it doesn't help his cause that much of his humor is bitter and cynical. The play's tone changes so much that it feels like two different shows, one a cheeky satire, the other a wrenching drama, and these are two great tastes that don't always go great together.

The play presents two young Iowa couples, one more or less traditional, the other less so. Abby (Liz Bernardo, channeling sweetness and innocence) has spent her life wanting nothing more than to be a wife and mother, a "choice" hammered home by her ultra-conservative mother (Emily Young, funny), who's worried that if Catholic JFK is elected president "it will be the Spanish Inquisition all over again." Abby's more progressive sister, Sheryl (Heather Ireland), is mocked by her mom and the narrator for having a "gay" husband.

Abby meets Mason Lawrence (Skyler Randolf, effectively easygoing) during a nuke drill in high school, and before anyone has the chance to escape their teens, they're hitched. ("I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, so I got married," Mason tells the audience.) With neither partner a fully formed adult – some intentionally awkward sex scenes drive this point home – and Mason too immature to handle his end of the marital bargain, the marriage quickly falls apart.

The more interesting couple is overachiever Daniel Henry (Rosander) and perpetual student/rich girl Ruth (Susan Auten), who meet in college, form an intense sexual bond (Rosander's gyrations are highly entertaining) and are soon getting married and hoping Daniel's very German parents (Felicia Potts and Richard Eisen) won't notice that the Henrys' first child is being born just seven months after their wedding day. Raising kids and carrying a heavy college workload don't exactly mix, however, and their relationship soon cracks under the strain.

The action takes a turn for the serious in Act 2 – "Kramer vs. Kramer" serious – when divorce comes into the picture and there are kids involved (the "Dragnet" theme announces that these divorcees were little better than criminals in 1959). Carla Clark, an adult, is pretty great as Ruth and Daniel's unexplained black child, Evelyn, and the couple's fights in front of her are bracing stuff. But while Rosander and Auten – she's scarily effective at creating a character whose flat tone masks something just short of pure evil – handle the material well, the shift is too abrupt from the comedy that precedes and surrounds it.

Not helping matters is an unattractive set, which looks both shabby and uninspired.

The play does end on a somewhat hopeful note, but with all that's come before it, it's a sadder but wiser kind of upbeat.